It was during the university days that I had thought about how the marketing of food should be re vamped. Why should there be a particular aisle dedicated to Healthy eating because isn’t that what we should be eating and they should be selling! Healthy foods should not be a speciality. Instead there should be the unhealthy foods arranged in an aisle together as ‘Bad for you’ range as against ‘good for you’ range.
And today I read about ‘Fat Tax’ being introduced in UK and Ireland soon following the Hungary’s junk food tax, Denmark’s fat tax and France’s tax on sweetened beverages . Afterall Britian is the fifth fattest nation in Europe.The result of the fat tax could be a drop in the sales of unhealthy foods. The authors of the Oxford study say that extending the 17.5% rate of VAT to unhealthy foods in the UK would prevent up to 2,700 people dying of heart disease each year.
The fat tax does have opponents that feel that this will be unsuccessful and will mean that people will have to shell out more of their income towards food in times when recession is a bane and families are hard pressed. Also manufacturers feel that they are doing their bit towards their voluntary pledge of reducing calories and salt. But I guess this is just the beginning to revolutions and whether through enforcement or voluntary pledges manufacturers need to get this clear message that if they want buyers for their product they need to make their food healthy and get rid of 3 health enemies: fat, sugar, salt!!
Till then we buyers need to be smart eaters and make healthy choices among all the temptations. So Eat Healthy, Live Healthy !
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